


Something about Salvation

by fanforfanatic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dean Has Issues, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Dean doesn't go to Purgatory, Dean feels guilty, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gates of Hell, Hurt/Comfort, No Purgatory, Season/Series 07, Season/Series 08, Torture, Trials of Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:55:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanforfanatic/pseuds/fanforfanatic
Summary: A rogue soul escapes hell and its tortures. Top side, she runs into a man wearing the same face as one of her tormentors from her first decade in the pit. The one who had piercing green eyes.Or, one of the souls Dean tortured in hell escapes and he’s forced to face his actions from his last month in the basement.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There is explicit depiction of torture. It's not bad, but I want to give you a heads up in any case.  
> I hope you enjoy :)

 

Magnolia hated her name. It was kind of ugly, rolled off the tongue awkwardly and just didn’t _fit_ her. It was too sweet, too precious. Growing up, she’d spent many years trying to shake it. _Call me Maggie. Call me Lia._

Here, though, she held onto it like a lifeline. So much time had passed since she’d been placed on the racks it was hard to remember anything from her old life, but she could remember her name. 

By the time her first century in hell came to an end, she’d forgotten her home. The backgrounds to her memories faded, leaving precious moments in time without a backdrop. She still remembered her mom making them dinner, but couldn’t for the life of her recall what their kitchen looked like. With time, details just seemed to dim and disappear. Her mom wasn’t standing at a grimy off white counter pouring cereal and milk into a bowl she’d pulled from a splintered wooden cupboard while a six year old Magnolia sat at the patio table for two they used as a dining table. The image had just become her mom fixing her a meal. Something. Somewhere.

It took another century to forget interactions. She knew she’d kissed Simon Kester in the cluster of trees behind her high school at sixteen. It had been sloppy but fun except for the bark dinging into her back. She had disliked the smell of so much greenery but had liked the cologne Simon probably stole from his brother. She kept losing pieces of the puzzle though. Soon all she knew was that she’d kissed Simon. _Somewhere._ Then she just remembered Simon himself. Couldn’t recall any time they spent together but she knew she had known him. It didn’t take much time after that for her to only remember a face, his name long lost. They, her torturers, had ripped it out of her just like they’d ripped her teeth out, her nails off.

They restored her, of course, at the end of every day they put her back together only to start back up the next morning but she never got her memories back.

Realising she was forgetting names made her cling to her own.

She’d spent three hundred years in hell, when she realised she was forgetting faces too. It was a startling discovery because thinking of her life had kept her strong, here. Had helped her survive. Had given her the strength to say ‘no’ whenever they offered her to get off the rack to do to others what had been done to her. So how was she managing to forget? 

She found herself trying to put together the images of people she barely knew anymore. Like ripped scraps of pictures from magazines taped together. She tried to make a collage from the fragments she could recall, but each time it resembled less and less the original. One face she rebuilt more than any other until it barely looked human anymore. The jagged edges of the shards she put together in her mind stopped lining up making the visage seem _wrong._ She was no longer sure who the person even was. She was a girl, that much Magnolia knew. A friend? A sister maybe? Whoever she was Magnolia figured she wasn’t honoring her by literally defacing her. So she stopped trying to recall altogether.

It felt suspiciously like giving up, like giving in to these sadistic fuckers that kept her here and that’s something she just couldn’t do. Wouldn’t. So she held onto herself. To her name.

To add insult to injury, she never forgot them, the men and women who came to her with malicious smiles carved into their faces wielding weapons meant exclusively for her torment. No, she’d learned every last one of their features. She’d engraved every last wrinkle in her mind. It was how she passed the time while they hacked away at her.

She started recognising their styles of torture too. She knew some of them wore different faces at times. They’d come one day looking like one person, leave, return looking like another. Magnolia recognised them though, they, the demons, each often had their own brand of sick and twisted. It helped tell them apart. 

The show runner she’d heard be called Alastair, was a bit of a voyeur, often accompanying a green eyed demon. The latter almost always started by gouging her eyes out. After a few years both of them stopped showing up and that’s when the shit really hit the fan for Magnolia. Another demon, Bethuel, took over as ring master. He was particularly fond of using blunt blades. She hated him the most. 

“Happy anniversary.” A lanky teenager greeted as he approached her. 

She was suspended in the air hanging from a dozen chains. She knew it was the beginning of a new day only because she didn’t have any significant injuries at the moment, though she did have a bone deep ache and tiredness. That was perpetual, however. In fact, she doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t constantly feel that way.

“Four hundred years, today.” He said cheerfully.

Magnolia didn’t acknowledge him. She didn’t even bother lifting her head to get a look at him. She knew Bethuel’s face best. He looked boyish and charming and it was the Great Deception because he was made up only of rot and evil. She wondered briefly if the human inside the possessed body was still around. She doubted it.

“It’s rude not to answer.” He snapped his voice dangerous and nothing like the sickening sweetness it had been before. 

Magnolia straightened her neck then to look him in the eyes, she smirked but only for a millisecond before pressing her lips together into a tight line. Pointedly not answering.

The demon scowled and stomped a foot reminding Magnolia of a petulant child. Had she known children? Had she had any? She might have been alive, well not alive, but around for over four centuries but she didn’t feel old enough to have had kids. To be a mother. God she hoped she hadn’t left kids behind.

“I don’t like to be ignored, Jessica, you know that.” He barked picking up a meat tenderizer . 

It was one of the ways some of the demons had of toying with her. Once, when one heard her murmuring ‘My name is Magnolia’ under her breath like a mantra he’d started calling her by any other name for no reason other than to fuck with her. Other demons had joined in on the fun.

He brought the mallet of choice down heavily onto her clavicle, which she heard snap. She hissed out in pain. _My name is Magnolia._

“I don’t know why you do this.” He said sort of like an exasperated teacher reprimanding a particularly difficult student.

He swung the hammer again this time busting a knee. _My name is Magnolia._

“You know it only angers me. You know it’s pointless. I always get you to scream in the end. You know I never stop until you do.”

A knife was stabbed in her armpit and dragged up to the crook of her elbow. Blood fell freely from the gash and landed with a smacking sound on the ground. More dripped down the side of her body. _My name is Magnolia._

The knife was then planted in her wrist and left there. _My name is Magnolia._

The demon tapped the dull point of the blade sticking out from the back of her wrist. “For safe keeping.” He said then lifted wire cutters so that she could see them.

_My name is Magnolia._

_My name is Magnolia._

_My name is Magnolia._

_Magnolia._ It’s all she had left. A name. She tried not to doubt it. The demons calling her Tracey, Ruth, Isabel, sometimes made it hard. She always found her way back to Magnolia though. The way it always fit wrong in her mouth felt right. She hated the name so goddamn much, it was ironic that it was all she could remember, now. Maybe she managed to remember it _because_ she hated it. Nevertheless, it was all she had. Her name and these faces.

-

Dean thought that maybe Sam had a point. Maybe driving well over an hour and many towns over for pie was excessive but it wasn’t _just_ pie. It was some of the best god damn pie he’d ever had.

The brothers had been operating from Rufus’ cabin, in Whitefish, Idaho whilst dealing with the leviathan fiasco. They had hit a lull though, waiting on one thing or another. Kevin to finish translating the tablet maybe. Cas to find something out. It was rough having nothing to do, knowing all the while that the country was in terrible danger. So they worked cases in the area most of the time, trying not to stray too far from the cabin, since it’s where all their research was, their home base for the time being.

Not having too much to do did have its upsides. It meant that Dean could afford to drive more than two hours, roundtrip, to Bigfork, Idaho. Unfortunately, not the home of the biggest fork. However, it was home to a hole in the wall diner that served _some of the best god damn pie he’d ever had_. Even Sam had liked it the first time they’d been there and had uncharacteristically opted for desert every ensuing visit. That wasn’t stopping the younger Winchester from being pissy on this day, though.

“Okay, but why do I have to be dragged along? You can order to go, you know.” Sam complained.

Dean shook his head vigorously at the absurdity. “That’d defeat the whole purpose. It’d be cold by the time I drive back to the cabin. What would be the point?”

“Whatever.” Sam mumbled.

“Quit moaning. Some people would be grateful to have an older brother treat them to a delicious lunch.” Dean mocked with a wiggle of his brows and an easy grin.

Sam sighed. “I’m just... worried, y’know. About...everything.”

“I know.” Dean replied without missing a beat because he did know. “But we can worry later,” He said reversing the car into a parking spot. “Now is the time for pie.”

Sam chuckled and rolled his eyes at Dean’s narrow focus on the here and now.

The two stepped out of the car. Hole in the wall was right. The diner, a mom and pop type shop, was nearly lost in the street’s industrial layout. It was mostly buildings that were falling apart on one side and one massive abandoned warehouse, or maybe it was a factory, on the other side. The diner itself was the first floor of an apartment complex, neighbouring a book store and a pawn shop. 

They made their way inside and escaped the grime of the street as the restaurant itself was quite well kept. It was small, only large enough for a handful of tables and two larger booths, but it was clean.

“Sit wherever, boys, I’ll be right with you.” Min, a waitress that had served them at least half a dozen times by now, told them.

When she brought them water and menus they slipped into easy conversation with her.

“School still going good?” Sam asked. He’d found out during a previous visit that she was majoring in electrical engineering.

“One final left the day after tomorrow.” She answered excitedly. “I still have two classes that I had to drop last year to make things work with my jobs but by the time summer ends I will be a graduate.” She smiled toothily at them. 

“That’s really great, Min.” Sam congratulated feeling an odd sort of pride for this girl he barely knew. 

“Yeah, awesome, super, fantastic, reading is fundamental. Can we get to things that matter please?” Dean insisted callously.

“Dude.” Sam reprimanded. 

“Dude.” Dean countered.

Min just laughed, though, unsurprised by the man’s behavior and the duo’s banter. The latter convinced her they were brothers. If not siblings then at least long time friends.

“Don’t worry about it. Dean, the special today is pecan. We also have a new burger heavy on the caramelized onion. So new, in fact, it’s not even on the menu, yet.” She winked at him conspiratorially.

“Yes, yes to all that and also a beer.”

“You got it.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Sam? The usual?”

“Yes, please. And,” He hesitated glancing at Dean briefly. “I’ll have a slice of the pecan too.”

“HA!” Dean exclaimed as though victorious but Sam always had some of the pie here so it’s not like the win was unexpected.

Sam rolled his eyes for what must have been the fifteenth time that day and Min laughed gleefully.

“Coming right up.” She assured clicking her pen and walking away towards the kitchen,

“Don’t.” Sam warned Dean.

“I wanna hear you say that I’m right and that coming here is a great idea _and_ that we’re about to have some of the best god damn pie-”

Dean was interrupted then by the earth rumbling beneath them, a loud crash and a piercing scream, one that sounded familiar to him, coming from below.

The well-known cry shocked Dean into stillness as opposed to Sam who was up and by the counter of the diner pulling out an FBI badge from the breast pocket of his army jacket within moments. He flashes it to Min and the rest of the kitchen crew.

“I’ll check it out.” He told them. “My partner will stay with you.” 

_Huh,_ Min thought, _not brothers._

Sam looked over his shoulder and was surprised to find Dean still in their booth. “Dean.” He said, jolting him into action.

The hunter shrugged an icy feeling off and jumped to his feet. “Go.” He assured moving closer to the other occupants of the diner. It was past the lunch time rush and the brothers had been the only customers so it boiled down to the employees working that afternoon.

Min pointed to the door that lead to the basement of the building, where they heard the crash and the scream. 

“Sam.” She said before he turned the knob. “There shouldn’t be anyone down there. Everyone who’s working is here.”

He nodded in response and then offered a small comforting smile.

As he made his way down the steps Sam heard the tell tale signs of a fight. He’d thought that the quake had caused something to fall over and someone to get injured, but it was obvious now that more was going on. So he pulled his gun out and flew down the rest of the stairs.

-

Days where no one came to torture her were rare. They occurred in clusters a while back. During that time she’d heard murmurs of Lucifer’s release. She couldn’t help but laugh at that. _Of course._ She was in hell and demons were real why wouldn’t Lucifer be as well. She figured that’s what had kept the demons occupied. Though, Bethuel made it a point to visit her even then. Now, days off were few and far in between. 

It was a few weeks, maybe a month, maybe more, after what Bethuel had fondly called her four hundred year anniversary, when Magnolia got one of those days off. Sort of. Mostly.

A demon had walked into her cell and had released her chains. She knew that never meant anything good. It meant this demon wanted to play. Wanted to see her scurry and run and try to hide in a concrete room empty save for the cart of torture tools kept by the door. A room where there was nowhere to hide.

She hated when they got this way because she didn’t want to play along, didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, but it was _hard not to._ Hard not to throw a punch, poke an eye, kick a groin. Hard not to retreat to a corner of the room. Hard not to try to avoid the pain that was sure to come. And it was always sure to come. Her efforts were fruitless, which she knew. They knew she knew. The game was rigged. That was the whole point. They wanted to give her hope, give her some semblance of power, only to have her realise time and time again that it wouldn’t be enough.

Magnolia braced herself for the first kick that would send her across the room and the inevitable taunting that would follow but then something that had never happened before in all her time in hell happened.

The demon was called away. A female voice came from down the hall had beckoned him to her. So the man huffed, promised Magnolia a swift return and left closing the grid door behind him. First it shut with a loud clank and then it was followed by a small click as the lock mechanism fell into place.

Not a second went by before the door opened again. The same demon reentered the room.

“No point in chaining you back up at play time. I’ll just take this outside.” He explained with a darkness in his eyes. He grabbed hold of the cart with the tools of his trade and dragged it out of the room behind him. “Not that it really makes a difference.” He laughed maliciously making Magnolia shudder.

_My name is Magnolia._

The metal door shut again with a loud clank and then... That was it. Magnolia waited to hear the softer click that always, _always,_ followed but it never came.

She laid there with a bruised knee from her fall for long torturous minutes, waiting for reality to hit. For a swarm of demons to rush into the room and cackle at how she was too weak now to fall for their traps but that it didn’t matter because they still knew how to have fun with her. But that never came either.

So Magnolia rose to unsteady feet, prayed for them not to fail her and took hesitant steps towards the door. She pressed on it and marveled when it gave under the light pressure of her hand. She cringed when it creaked sharply and retreated quickly further back inside the room. 

_My name is Magnolia._

She waited for the a stampede of footsteps to hustle towards her cell but was met by quiet. Well not quiet. She could still hear the pained wailing of other captives far away but that had become white noise at this point. So Magnolia gathered all the courage she had, the few scraps she could manage anyway, and stepped outside of her prison. Another first since being brought here. In the past, when they had wanted to move her, she’d be so beaten they had to drag her body on the stone floor. 

She was on her own two feet now, though. The demon she’d seen last had gone left so she was going right, but not before picking something off of the cart he’d pulled out of the room. That goddamn cart that had taunted and tormented her even when no demons were around and now it had become her salvation. 

She skimmed what it had to offer quickly pocketing a knife and a revolver. She laughed softly at a time when she thought being shot was the worst thing that could happen to her. A time when she thought that had to be the worst sort of pain. These demons, if nothing else, had taught her how untrue that was.

Next she took a dagger and a sword in each hand. She wanted something to keep as much distance between her and demons but she didn’t want to resort to the gun right away as not to alert more demons, thus the sword. She remembered distinct times when all four of her chosen weapons had been used against her. On her skin. Left lodged inside of her as demons busied themselves with another device. The irony was not lost on her.

She wasn’t deluded enough to think that anything from the cart could do any lasting damage to a demon but she figured it’d be hard for them to drag her back to her cell if they got their head, or say their feet, chopped off.

She started making her way down the silent corridor. Apparently the demons hadn’t been working the cells in her hall yet since most of the screaming she could hear was coming from further away. 

The passage didn’t remain hushed for long though as other captives started to speak up. To beg really. They plead for her to help. Cried for her to free them.

One man said, “You can’t leave us here, _please._ ”

And he... He was right. Magnolia thought she’d regret it, she knew that if she had any hope to get out of here it’d have to be quick and quiet but she _couldn’t_ leave them there. It’d make her a monster just like her tormentors and hadn’t she spent the last four hundred years denying that she was anything like them. Turning down their offer to become them. Leaving these lost souls here would make her a demon in every other sense of the word. And she was _Magnolia_ not a demon. Never that.

So against her better judgement she stopped at each cell, starting with that man’s, pushed the metal grids, that she knew only locked from the inside, open and pulled the lever that made the chains evaporate dropping bodies. She moved down the hall at a painfully slow pace, zigzagging between the walls to get to each prison. After a few captors were released she found that she was moving a lot faster, because they’d armed themselves from the carts in their own jails and _helped._

So for the first time in over four hundred years Magnolia believed, not only in hope, not only in escape but in humanity. The cluster of humans moved together down the corridor, freeing each other, supporting those with injuries, wielding the same weapons that had been used against them no more than twenty four hours ago, growing in numbers.

Magnolia wasn’t too much of a religious type, she didn’t think, but there was something goddamn biblical about the scene. Something about deliverance.

They got further than she thought they would before the first demon showed up. The people she was with, they all... sort of rushed him. As some sort of unit just trudged forward, perhaps on sheer will alone, and obliterated him. They stabbed him and severed an arm and someone shot him in the head before the demon escaped its vessel in a black smoke. When more showed up, and a lot more showed up, they did the same. They freed more and more captives as they went.

She isn’t sure how, maybe it was the thrill of killing, of revenge, maybe it was mob mentality, maybe it was pure dumb luck but the crowd she found herself leading somehow collectively decided to head in the direction where they saw the most demons. Magnolia liked to think they were all smart enough to know that demons would be guarding the exit. Magnolia also liked to think that the demons were dumb enough to lead them through the maze of hell to the doorway of their escape. Which is exactly what they did.

After some time they found themselves in front of a massive iron gate. It was heavy and ugly and locked.

“More are coming.” The first man she’d freed said from the left of her. “We need to get this thing open if we plan on getting out.”

A chorus of voices chimed behind them in agreement. She turned and saw over five dozen or so faces staring back at her. Faces that were nothing like her tormentors’. Faces she didn’t have the time to learn in this moment but that she wished she could. She wished it was their features she had committed to memory instead of those of the demons that had torn her apart time and time _and time again._

Her heart went out to these people. No one deserves the agony of this place, no one deserves to have their humanity tampered with. It’s an unfair battle, one they had a chance to win.

“My name is Magnolia.” She said to them, for no reason at all other than she wanted them to know it. Needed someone to know it. 

The faces stared on and Magnolia could read them so easily because she saw in them exactly what she knew was reflected in her own. Fear. And hope. So much hope. Briefly, it felt like she had lead some sort of rebellion. One that wouldn’t mean anything if she didn’t come through on the home stretch. It wouldn’t mean anything if she couldn’t get the gate open.

“I know this is hell,” She said finally. “But do you guys think we can just pick the lock?”

Everyone exchanged glances and...shrugged. 

A boy, he looked barely ten, too young to be here, approached Magnolia and handed her a pocket knife. She took it from his tiny shaking hand and whispered a thank you.

“Magnolia, now.” The man, to her right now that she had turned, barked.

She understood the urgency when she lifted her eyes and found more demons turning the corner at the end of the hall heading their way. The escapees turned their backs to Magnolia ready to fight, ready to protect her. It was all or nothing at this point. It was go big _and_ go home. _Maybe._

Bodies were flung into walls and into each other as the demons stalked closer and closer, but it was the man by her side that startled her into action.

“Do you know _how_ to pick a lock?”

“Yes.” She said turning to face the gargantuan double doors. She wasn’t sure how she knew that she knew but flashes of memories were returning to her. “At least I did. A long time ago.”

“Well, get to it. It’s down to you, so no pressure.”

She looked up to him and was met with a smirk and a wild glint in his eyes.

“Someone like you, someone who’d stop to help the rest of us, you got this. I know.” He winks and then leaves her to join the fight.

Behind her she could hear gun shots and the sound of skin smacking cold concrete and cold stone but before her she could see freedom and salvation and that’s what she had to focus on.

She didn’t have to kneel, the lock was level with her chest, that’s how colossal the doors were. Seemed about right if they were The Gates Of Hell. She dropped her sword to the ground, she’d lost her dagger earlier in the fight, and pulled out the small blade she’d pocketed. She opened the switch knife gifted to her by the child, it was the kind that had other tools inside of it, and set to work on picking the lock.

Her hair fell into her face more than once, which was more than annoying. Her hair was something else she’d hated. The demons had had field days pulling on it, sometimes hard enough to tear out clumps, sometimes hard enough to tear her scalp.

Once she had tucked her strands behind her ears, it was easier to concentrate than she thought it would be. Despite the noise coming from behind her. Despite the chaos. Despite knowing exactly when the demons got close enough to get their hands on her- her what?- comrades in arms. She could hear their bones snap, their throats collapse. She could hear the sounds of their tortured screams, familiar, haunting, torturous in their own right. She heard one scream that made her heart sink because she could have sworn in was the little boy’s. It was too small to belong to anyone else.

That’s when the lock gave. The bolt unlatched and the doors swung open slowly with a grunt. The earth rumbled and an eery calm came over the mosh pit behind her. She stepped forward, slowly, afraid. Afraid of what? Freedom? Salvation? She didn’t know, but she was afraid.

She passed the threshold and when both her feet were on the other side she felt that bone deep ache finally, _finally,_ lift if only a little. She turned slowly and saw a motionless picture of tangled limbs. Captors and captives stared back at her in a still moment.

“Shit.” One demon muttered under his breath.

Then Magnolia saw what could only be described as all hell breaking loose. A collective and powerful roar escaped from souls that had once been prisoners as they clawed their way to the gate, to their freedom. 

Without much thought Magnolia tried to step back through, to help, but didn’t make it far. It was like a screen had formed keeping the two worlds apart, allowing passage only one way. At least it as the right way, she thought. At least it was the way out and not in. 

A rush of people started filing out but moments after they did they were encompassed by a bright light. Magnolia saw the souls lift and rise upwards and into the ceiling where they disappeared. Tears flowed freely from her eyes as she realised that they were Heaven bound. However long they had been trapped in that pit of despair they were headed somewhere better now. They were headed somewhere they would never have to hurt again.

Magnolia was so full of awe as she watched deliverance occur right before her eyes that she barely noted that she herself wasn’t moving on. Her bare feet had remained planted firmly to the ground. That was until a demon stepped out of hell to come for her. He flicked his chin one way and up that way Magnolia’s body flew hitting large metal shelves.

The stand fell backwards from the collision and clattered loudly to the ground. The air was knocked out of her, something metallic was digging into her back. If she didn’t already know exactly what it felt like to have her spine severed she’d suspect that’s what had happened. 

Her body was tossed up again, hitting the ceiling before falling back onto the metal shelf unit. A bag of flower broke part of her fall, namely her face, but she felt her knee twist in a way that just wasn’t right.

“Dumb fucking bitch, you know how much shit we’re going to be in for this?”

She hurried off of the shelves as best she could and crawled to the exit. The demon had other plans for her, though.

An invisible force raised her from the ground so she hung suspended in the air in front of the demon, not unlike how she was kept chained in her cell.

From her vantage point Magnolia could see inside of the gate. She saw the near last handful of people step through the door, nod their thank yous, and move on in white lights. 

The demon was saying something, talking to her, but she didn’t care. She was caught, but so many people weren’t anymore. Only one person was left.

“Pay attention, whore.” The demon snapped irritatedly. 

She saw the man she’d first freed bash in the head of the last demon standing on the other side of the gate. But she also saw more demons appearing at the end of the hall.

“Hurry!” She croaked as the demon who had her squeezed her lungs in a tight grip. 

“Shut. Up.” He barked. With his free hand he willed the gates to close. The doors were so massive it was slow enough to give the man inside time.

When the demon beneath him escaped in smoke form, the man didn’t run for the exit, though. No, to her horror, Magnolia saw him step further into hell. 

“HURRY!” She screeched again, her lungs restricting even more.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” The demon yelled shaking her like a rattle. 

Magnolia ignored him some more, but understood why the man had backtracked. She watched him bend down and lift the small boy from earlier into his arms. He sprinted, then, out of Hell, onto earth, just as the gates sealed behind him.

Light erupted in his arms as the boy’s limp form rose upwards and disappeared from view. Magnolia cried some more. 

As soon as that happened the man picked up a metal rod from the ground and swung it at the demon holding his savior in the air. That’s what she was, his savior.

The rod dropped to the ground before it ever hit the demon though. It fell right through the man’s hands as he began to ascend to his own afterlife.

“NO! No wait!” He tried to bear down, to return, to help, but up was the only direction he went. “Magnolia!” Then he was gone.

Magnolia was once again alone in a dingy room with one of those faces.

The demon laughed evilly. “It’s cute that he thought he could help you.” He mocked.

“He helped many others.” She spat back, a raging fury boiling inside her. 

The demon scowled. “Your whore mouth? Shut it.” He ordered flinging the fallen metal rod into and through her thigh.

Magnolia grunted through clenched teeth and then _smirked._ “You wanna know something about hell? It’s full of demons that are better at this than you are.” She griped the metal pipe with a hand and in one swift tug pulled it completely through and out of her leg.

She threw the rod at him. She didn’t expect to harm him with it and wasn’t surprised when he deflected it easily.

The grasp on her lungs constricted further and Magnolia was no long sure when she had last breathed in air.

“Good thing I have you to practice on.”

The last thing she heard and saw before passing out is a giant man with luscious locks kicking down the door she had crawled to earlier. Poor guy, he had no idea what he had gotten himself into. Maybe they’d be cell neighbors when they’re brought back to hell. Maybe in another four hundred years they’d get a chance to escape together. She doubted it, but maybe. Magnolia refused to lose hope entirely. The demons might have her again but they never really _had_ her. She never caved, she never would.

-

_You wanna know something about hell? It’s full of demons that are better at this than you are._

_Good thing I have you to practice on._

Sam heard two voices before he kicked the door off its hinges. He wasn’t expecting demons, but demons are what he got. Well, one demon. He shot at it only to regret it when that caused the girl to drop to the ground. He winced at the loud cracking sound. The rest went more smoothly. Sam had an angel blade buried in the demon’s throat within minutes.

When that happened, he watched large iron gates morph into what looked like doors to a simple storage room. Sam rushed to the girl and assessed the damage. Her knee was sprained if not broken, a hole was punched through her thigh and her wrist was shattered, all on the left side. But she was breathing, she was alive which was more than most could say after going toe to toe with a demon. 

Sam sighed. How was he supposed to explain any of this to Min, her coworkers and the owners upstairs?

-

It took some insisting, some charming and some more badge flashing but everyone at the diner eventually relented on allowing the FBI agents to leave with the wounded girl they’d found in their basement instead of calling an ambulance.

Sam had carried her out to the car while Dean apologised for the mess he imagined Sam had left and graciously accepted the full pie Min had packed for them to go. He didn’t even grumble about how it wouldn’t be warm by the time he got to eat it.

Dean slid easily into the driver’s seat of the impala, glancing quickly at the unconscious body in the back. Her hair covered her face, a strip of fabric was tied around her thigh and Sam’s balled up jacket was placed under her left knee. He sighed turning the key in the ignition.

“What happened?” He asked as he pulled out of their parking spot.

“A demon and...”

“And?”

“A portal, I think.”

“A portal? To where?”

“My guess? Hell.”

“Another gate? Fuck, how many entrances does that place need? Since when do demons even use those to get around?”

“I don’t know.”

Dean sighed again. “What’s the damage?”

“She’ll pull through. Best case we get Cas to heal her, but she’ll be fine with time. Might have a limp from now on though.”

“Any idea what they want from her?”

“No, but I... I think she’s been there before.”

“Been where?”

“To hell. In hell. Whichever.”

“Shit. What makes you think that?”

“Something she and the demon were saying to each other.”

“They were chatting? This wasn’t a normal demon attack was it?”

“With our luck?”

“I know, why do I bother asking.” Dean sighed for a third time.

-

Magnolia woke up in some sort of lodge on an ugly red and patchy couch. The strange part was that she was waking up. Slowly, naturally rousing out of slumber like she had been used to a long time ago. She wasn’t abruptly being startled out of unconsciousness from one affliction or another. Wasn’t jolted into awareness by a sinister laugh. She was simply waking up.

Though that was strange the stranger part was the man sitting two feet away from her on an equally ugly chair. He’d been the one to bust into the room before. But if that were the case why wasn’t he dead, or worse why weren’t they back in hell. This place might needed some serious dusting and maybe some redecorating but this wasn’t hell. In fact, it was nicer than where she’d grown up. _Hadn’t it been a while since she remembered what that looked like?_

“You’re up.” The large man intoned softly with even softer eyes.

Magnolia nodded and sat up wincing through the pain in her leg and wrist.

The man looked at her appraisingly. “That doesn’t hurt more?”

She eyed him right back, with suspicion. Did he want her to hurt more? “High threshold.” She explained.

He nodded than offered his hand. “I’m Sam.”

She moved to grasp his hand so hesitantly it reminded Sam of a fearful animal. She shook it in the end though. “M-My name is Magnolia. What happened?”

“What do you remember?”

Her eyes narrowed then. “I don’t like games.”

Sam put up his hands in surrender. “You took a nasty fall. I just don’t want to remind you of something you might prefer left forgotten.”

“You saw me hovering, levitating, or whatever.”

“Yeah. You know what was doing that to you?”

“You’d have me committed if I answered truthfully.”

“It was a demon.” He deadpanned. “I killed it.”

Magnolia hardened even more so. “You know about demons. You know how to kill them.” She stated.

“My brother and I, we hunt them for a living, amongst other things.”

Magnolia noticed then the shower that had been running in another room. “Other things?”

“Do you want to know?”

“No.”

Sam nods. “Then let’s leave it at other things.”

Magnolia looked around noticing that it’s dark out. “Now what?”

“Do you know what it wanted with you? If more will come for you?”

“I don’t know...I don’t think I’m of value. I don’t think they’d bother. I don’t know. If you really did kill that one, maybe the rest won’t even know I survived. The others... they... they’re gone.” She looked like she was piecing together a complex puzzle. “Am I alive?”

The question startled Sam. “Why would you ask that? You’re here aren’t you?”

“The others didn’t stick around. They moved on.”

“What others? There were more demons?”

“No. I mean yes. I mean...” She sighed deeply. “The people I escaped with. When they left hell, they just... I think they went to heaven, but I’m still here.”

“There were others? Humans? You escaped Hell?” Sam asked confused. This girl was no hunter, barely aware of what goes bump in the night yet she manage to escape Hell?

“How’d you manage that?” Dean asked chuckling from a doorway, towel drying his hair.

Magnolia tensed.

“Hey, hey it’s okay. It’s the brother I told you about, Dean. He hunts them with me, you’re still safe.” Sam reassured. 

She shut her eyes and let her head hang. Her hair fell forward shielding her like a curtain, a blessing for once. She thinks she might like to cut it anyway, now that she’s _out_.

She nodded rigidly letting Sam know that she’d heard him but that she’d need a minute. She heard the brother, Dean, move around the couch to sit on the coffee table beside her and Sam. She breathed deeply through her nose, relaxed her shoulders and her back. 

_My name is Magnolia._ She reminded herself.

When she’d calmed sufficiently she lifted her head back up and opened her eyes ready to accept the safety they were offering her. What she was met with was a face. Not just a face, but _a_ _face._ One of the faces she’d learned while she was caged.

It looked different now. Older. But it was still the same face. The same jaw, the same slightly dimpled chin. The same cheekbones with the same slightly asymmetrical nose. The same piercing green eyes surrounded by the same wrinkles. The same cupid’s bow lips framed by the same creases. Laugh lines she had thought bitterly all that time ago.

He was one of them. She hadn’t escaped. This was all part of their game. She was still in her cell, for all intents and purposes. She was still trapped. Still their prey. Magnolia wasn’t sure how they had orchestrated it all, she was mildly impressed but mostly she was petrified. 

Something was wrong though, well something _else._ Because the face that stared back at her looked just as scared to see her as she was to see it. He looked downright traumatised.

Magnolia jumped on the couch her injuries mostly forgotten. Pain she could handle. Sam was up half a beat after her but Magnolia was quicker than him. She stumbled backwards and managed to hop ungracefully off the arm of the couch.

“No!” She yelled. “You can’t take me back. I won’t let you. _You can’t._ ” She screeched. She reached for something, _anything,_ a chair to hold between them knowing full well it would do nothing to protect her.

Her words startled Dean into action himself. He reeled back, nearly tripping on the table, dropping his small towel, and put as much distance between the two of them as possible pressing his back to the corner furthest from her. It was for her sake as well as his. 

“Hey, hey, calm down, Magnolia, it’s okay. I told you he’s my brother.”

“I’m sorry to break it to ya, Sam,” She said with a hysteria laden voice. “But that is no longer your brother. They can... they can _possess_ people. Unless you’re,” She shifted then to hold the chair between her and Sam. “You’re one of them too?”

Magnolia tried fighting the tears but she couldn’t help but start sobbing. She’d been so close. 

“NO!” She yelled. “You’re all sick you know that. You can’t _do_ this. I don’t deserve this.”

“Maggie, please, listen to-”

“ _My name is Magnolia._ ” She snapped at Sam.

“Magnolia. I swear we aren’t demons. I promise. I don’t know how to help you believe it.” It’s not like she knows about holy water. Even if she did, it’s not like he could confirm the water in his flask was holy. Sam did his best to look as non-threatening as possible.

Magnolia pondered that for a moment, her eyes going from Sam to Dean back to Sam because Dean was so hard to look at. “Go stand over there.” She said to Sam pointing towards a wall with a cork board with a bunch of newspaper clippings pinned to a map of the US on it.

Sam obeyed clearing her a path to the exit. Dean stayed stock still, his eyes still not leaving her, too consumed by the screams in his head to do anything more than stare at her.

“Good. I’m going to leave,” She said inching towards the front door, favouring her right leg. “And you’re going to let me. That’s how you help me believe it.”

“I can’t let you do that.” Sam countered taking a step towards her.

She lifts the chair higher in pathetic defense, ignoring her tightly bandaged wrist’s complain. Sam cursed himself.

“I don’t want to hurt you Magnolia, but more demons might be out there coming for you. We want to keep you safe.”

“I don’t believe you.” She wailed back.

To Dean, the sound felt like a whip striking his face. He remembered her. He remembered them all. Every last helpless soul he’d tortured under Allistair’s command. That decade he spent in hell doing to others what had been done to him. She’d been one of them. One of the hundreds. He remembered her making it hard too. Bottling up as much as she could for as long as she could. But that had made it worse, because Dean hadn’t been allowed to stop until he made her scream. So he made her scream. Time and time again. All the while she had observed him, studied him. Learned his face until he couldn’t take her weighty gaze any longer. Until he couldn’t handle having her eyes on him.

“Sam.” Dean finally spoke making the girl jump. “She was on the rack. My last month in hell, she was on the rack.”

Realisation dawned on Sam as he put the pieces together. It made him sick to his stomach.

“Magnolia, please.” Sam spoke. “There has to be some way to reassure you. Even if demons aren’t after you it’s the middle of the night and we’re deep in the woods. You’ll get lost out there before getting to a town.”

Magnolia hesitated. “This place... it doesn’t smell like rotten eggs. Neither do the two of you.”

“Yes! Okay good this is good. That smell, it’s sulfur, demons reek of it.”

“This can still be a trap. I... I _remember_ him.” She argued near tears again, nodding towards Dean without looking at him.

“We can explain that, Magnolia. Besides, if we really are demons do you think you’re going to get far with that chair in the middle of nowhere?”

Magnolia laughed a dark desperate laugh that rattled the brothers. “I guess not.” She put the chair down and fell onto it, head in her hands, elbows on her knees. “Do your worst. Not that you’d need the encouragement.” She looked up at them with hatred in her eyes. “Don’t misunderstand me. Just because I see the predicament I’m in for what it is doesn’t mean you’ve broken me. You’ll never do that.”

Sam began to move closer to her slowly, picking up the first aid kit left on the coffee table from when he’d bandaged her up earlier. When he stood a few feet away from her he kneeled and shuffled the rest of the way forward. He didn’t want his imposing height to loom over her.

“No one wants to break you. We want to help. We want to keep you safe, I promise, Magnolia.” He opened the white plastic box and retrieved more bandages and gauze. He pointed to the bloodied ones on her thigh.

She hadn’t even noticed that she’d started to bleed again. She nodded to him, scooting forward on her seat to have the bandaged part of her leg hang off the chair.

Slowly, giving her the opportunity to stop him, Sam touched the fabric and uncoiled it from around her thigh. “You’re going to need to stay off your feet. I set your knee earlier but if you want it to heal right you need to take it easy. No more vaulting off of couches. No more parkour.” He tried to kid at the end.

A glance upwards showed him that no one in the room appreciated his attempt. Magnolia was staring warily behind him at Dean who was undoubtedly staring back. Sam couldn’t imagine what the two were going through. She had to sit here and face a man who’d tortured her and his brother had to face what he’d done in hell. This was one of Dean’s nightmares brought to life. Magnolia was the embodiment of all the guilt and shame Dean had festering inside of him. It was a while since he’d gotten out of the pit, but the self-disgust Dean felt about what he’d done never went away. It was just tamped down so he could deal with the next big bad. So he could focus on the world not ending. 

“Turns out your wrist is only sprained, but I’d try not to overdo it too.” Sam continued. “Hey Dean, do you know if Rufus kept crutches here?”

Dean didn’t respond, couldn’t find his voice but he scurried off to check the basement.

Sam and Magnolia stayed silent as the hunter applied a cool creme through the holes in her jeans to both spots where the metal rod had pierced her thigh. He’d sewed her up earlier while she was knocked out and only a few of the stitches had torn in her haste. So he didn’t bother with more needle work, opting to wipe the fresh blood, applying the disinfecting ointment and wrapping her leg up again.

By the time Sam was done, Dean was back. He was impossibly close, many feet away, but still too close when he set the crutches against the table. Magnolia’s nostrils flared as her breathing became more laborious. Dean took large steps back.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay. See,” Sam tapped her latest bandages lightly. “Demons don’t do this sort of stuff.”

“I’m scared to believe you.” She admitted in a rush.

“But you do, don’t you? You can tell we don’t want to harm you.”

Magnolia nodded, then, surprising herself only a little. Her time in Hell meant she knew what malicious intent looked like.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

Magnolia’s brow wrinkled in concentration. “It was a while back, time there is off so I don’t know, but I was...” She thought hard until memories began to resurface. “I was working the night shift at a Gas ‘n Sip, stocking gum of all things, and then something was being crammed down my throat and I couldn’t, I couldn’t...”

“You were possessed.”

“Yes. I was still there though, still aware just not in control. The demon who took over my body he was...really bad at his job. He met with another demon, his boss I think, only a week after possessing me and this new demon... His name was like a bird or something.”

“Crowley.” Dean said gruffly making Magnolia flinch which in turn made him take another self-hating step back.

She regained her composure quickly enough and nodded. “Crowley. Like a crow. He killed the demon that had possessed me, burned him up from inside until I was all that was left again.”

“You were still alive?”

“I don’t know? I was in hell, so I just figured I’d died but I don’t remember dying. It’d explain why I didn’t move on when I walked through the gate, though. I think maybe I really was alive because the demon, Crowley, he laughed and said to store me on a rack. He said the boys had earned a live pound of flesh to play with. Then I was dragged off and strung up and then they- they-”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. We know. We know what they do there. I’m sorry you had to live through that.”

Magnolia just nodded because there was nothing to say.

“How long ago did you escape?” He asked. How long had she been running from demons?

Magnolia gave him a confused look. “When you found me.” She answered.

It was Sam’s turn to furrow his brows in confusion because something didn’t add up. If she hadn’t escaped until earlier that day, and she was there during Dean’s last month in hell, that mean’t she had been there for _at least_...

“When were you taken?” Sam asked pressingly.

Magnolia shrugged. “I don’t know. It was early fall.”

“What year?” Dean asked then, catching on to Sam’s line of thought.

Magnolia pointedly looked at only Sam when she answered. “Two thousand and eight. What year is it now?”

“It’s spring twenty twelve.” Sam whispers.

“Oh.” She answered, unbothered. 

“Oh?” Sam questioned. “You were there for three and a half years and all you have to say is oh?”

“Why are you getting agitated, it’s not like you’re the one who has lost time. Honestly, I can’t believe I’m out, I can’t believe I’m alive. Losing a few years seems...insignificant.”

Sam shakes his head almost violently. “You don’t understand, a month on earth feels like a decade in the pit. You’ve been there for _years_ that’s _centuries._ ”

“I know. They have special tortures for every hundred years you hit.”

“I’m gonna be sick.” Sam said standing abruptly and making his way to the sink in the kitchenette behind Magnolia. He cupped his hand under the faucet and drank some water not bothering with a glass.

“I don’t understand.” Magnolia said twisting in her seat towards him. “Isn’t hell supposed to be for all of eternity, why are you surprised by this?”

Sam didn’t get a chance to reply because Dean spoke. “I’m sorry.” His voice was so frail. Sam had never, in all his life, heard his brother sound so weak. So young and yet so worn.

Magnolia recoiled again at hearing the man speak. He didn’t do that often when he visited her cell in Hell. “If you’re not a demon, what were you even doing there?” She snapped harshly.

“I...The same thing as you.”

“I’m sorry but I think we were on opposite ends of the situation.” She bit and there was so much hate, so much resentment. This man had torn her apart, had bled her dry. She remembered _his_ particular likes. Most demons had them and his was to gouge her eyes out, almost as soon as he got in the room. It hadn’t stopped her from learning his face, though. Didn’t stop her from remembering it. Because how could she forget.

“Not at first.” Dean answered.

Wheels churned in her mind. _Not at first._ How had she not considered this earlier?

“You took the deal.” She said more so than asked. Her voice was softer though, no longer accusatory. 

He looked startled. By her knowledge. By her tone. “Yes.” He admitted shamefully. “You know about that?” Didn’t thought that deal was specific to him, to get him to break the first seal and jumpstart the apocalypse. 

“They offered it to me every night.”

“You never accepted it?” Dean asked. Centuries, she had to have given in at some point. Maybe that’s how she got enough leeway to escape.

Magnolia shook her head. “No, I...I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I hated them more than I hated the pain. I couldn’t give them the satisfaction. I think I might have been a very stubborn person.”

Tears pricked at Dean’s eyes because this girl, who hadn’t even been a hunter, was tortured for centuries and she still managed to say no. That’s thousands of ‘no’s at the end of thousands of days and he barely managed a quarter of a year topside. It took them three months to break him. “I’m so sorry.” He sobbed, a full body sob, unable to hold back any longer. He was so ashamed. 

Magnolia stood and stalked towards him, the pain in her leg only at the periphery of her mind. Dean watched her approach and didn’t bother taking a defensive position, though he sensed Sam tense. He didn’t care. She could do whatever she wanted to him. He deserved it. Deserved worse.

When she got close enough, Magnolia put her weight on her right leg, reached up and hugged Dean.

The Winchesters stood still, unsure of what exactly was happening.

“I know.” She whispered holding onto him tightly. “I know, I’m sorry too. What they do to people there, it’s not right. No one can expect us to survive.” They both understood what survive meant in this case. It had nothing to do with living, everything to do with staying whole. She was crying too, now. “I know. It’s okay. I know.”

A loud shuddering weep wracked through Dean’s body because how was this girl forgiving him? How was she being sorry? How could she offer him empathy? How could she see him as anything but a monster? 

“That offer, it’s hard to pass up, I know.” She clung to him so tightly as he trembled it had become more so for her benefit than his. “It’s okay, I forgive you, it’s okay, I promise.”

The more she held onto him the more she realised how much she missed humanity. Touch. She got flashes of embraces with people she had loved once. Still loved, maybe.

The harder she clutched the harder the grief hit her. She was finally mourning what happened to her. What she’d lost. What she’d endured. Who she’d been before becoming _this_ _Magnolia._

Finally she was able to commiserate with someone. She hadn’t even known it was something she wanted. She wondered if maybe the haunting screams she’d heard through the years had consoled her. It repulsed her to find that they did. What was that, about misery and company? 

There was definite comfort here, with a man who’d been through some of what she’d been through, knowing she’d been through some of what he’d been through. It made her feel less alien, knowing that he could understand her, understand the agony and the temptation to give in. Because she had been tempted, so tempted. Which is why she couldn’t hold it against him.

She could imagine it. Being on the other end of the blade inflicting the pain instead of enduring it. Inflicting it in order not to endure it. It’d cause a new sort of anguish, she knew. One that would set roots deep inside a soul. One that this man had been living with for years now. It’s a torment she couldn’t wrap her mind around, not fully. So instead she drew comfort from him and hoped he’d draw some from her. 

Magnolia thought maybe Dean had read her thoughts because that’s when he lifted his arms to wrap them around her. The two clung to each other fiercely. Both apologising for the other’s misfortune silently. One apologising for his actions in ineloquent mumbles.

It took a while for Magnolia’s shushing to finally get Dean to stop. She kept insisting that he didn’t have to ask for forgiveness. She kept saying they weren’t his sins to atone for. She murmured something about a cart and irony and deliverance. She whispered something about locks and freedom and hope. Then, she hummed something about salvation.

And Dean thought maybe he’d begun to find his.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This used to be a oneshot but I've split it into two parts. I apologise for any confusion that may have caused.

You know how specialists say talking about problems can be therapeutic and help someone deal with emotions and work through experiences and allow them to move on? Those specialist were talking about Magnolia.

She was a textbook case as more than once she jostled Dean out of sleep guiltily knowing full well the primary driver and hunter needed his rest only to drag him out of whatever dingy motel they were staying at and away from Sam's resting form to talk his ear off.

Sometimes it was about inconsequential dumb stuff that only mattered because they were neutral ground for Magnolia to free herself from her dark thoughts but usually it was about her dreams.

She'd tell Dean about the nightmares she had about hell, even months after her escape. Sometimes she'd go into gory details, sometimes she'd rant about her hatred for demonkind, sometimes she just sobbed in his arms as she swore she could still feel their hands on her. A few times she spoke of the people shed fought along side of to get out of hell.

She'd also tell Dean about these other dreams that were more like memories from her life _before_. She learned that she'd grown up without a father which didn’t bother her much since that morning she couldn’t even remember her mom. She recalled that said mom and a girl named Violet or maybe Viola were the people she cared about most in the world, once upon a time. She remembered that she had  been working a couple different jobs trying to save up for...something . She didn't so much recall as got the general gist that she'd grown up on the East coast in the rough parts of a rough city. It explained why she knew how to pick a lock and how to fight at least a little.

As weeks went by she spoke of the nightmares less and of the dream-memories more. Dean wasn't sure which he disliked the most. On the one hand, Hell, but on the other, these bursts of remembrance made him think that his days with Magnolia were numbered. That any morning now she'd look at Sam and Dean apologetically and say she wasn't going to be getting in the impala with them this time. She was going home. Which sounded so wrong to Dean because the impala was home. Sam and Cas and now Magnolia were home to him. And he wanted them to be that to her.

Since her breakout from Hell Magnolia had stuck with the Winchesters and that's how Dean wanted things to remain. She drove around the country with them without getting overly involved with hunts. She helped with research but decided that she'd witnessed enough horror for however many lifetimes 400 years was. She still trained a little just to make sure she could defend herself in case...just in case.

One of the first things they'd done is get her an anti-possession tattoo and that was the first time Sam and Dean had seen her smile so widely. She always carried holy water, a demon killing blade and, believe it or not, salt on her now. She'd memorised the exorcism and had the word 'Christo' on the tip of her tongue at the ready almost 24/7. Her paranoia was relatively mild considering and that was impressive in and of itself.

Once in a while, Magnolia would wake Dean unintentionally. She'd be in a cot between the furthest bed from the door and the back wall of the motel room sleeping unrestfully, thrashing, groaning, sweating, mumbling her own name and sometimes Dean's. Those nights, Dean would make his way over as quietly as he could so as not to disturb Sam and wake Magnolia himself. He'd offer for them to step outside like it was a novel idea and they usually did.

Tonight was one of those nights. Standing at the bottom of her bed Dean watched her writhe fearfully. She clutched hard at the sheets as her face twisted into sickening agony.

Dean crouched and placed a hand on her ankle, there was no room between the wall and the cot or Sam's bed and the cot for him to get closer, but the light touch was enough to startle Magnolia into consciousness.

It took her long seconds to collect her bearings.

_My name is Magnolia._

_I escaped Hell._

_I am in bad a motel with good men._

"Magnolia." Dean said in a low reassuring rumble.

Magnolia stared at him steadily, quieted her mind and brought her self back to the here and now. Back to him.

"Wanna get some air?" He asked like it was an oddity, a wild thought that'd come to him, like the two were being impromptu and spontaneous.

"Yes." She breathed gratefully.

She shimmied down the bed and stepped into the boots she kept there. On their way out she picked up the sweatshirt from the small table in the room. It was the one Sam had lent her the first day they met. It wasn’t really Sam's sweater anymore, though.

Once they were outside they both breathed in fresh crisp fall air. Had it really been half a year since she had freed herself?

Dean delicately took her hand in his and led the way to the impala where they both sat on the trunk. They sat quietly for a while and that was nice. Then Magnolia spoke and Dean thought that was nice too.

"How long did it take for your dreams to stop?" She asked curiously if not a little desperatly, though her tone remained gentle .

"They... I had them every time I slept for most of that first year. Then it was less often until it was only once in a while. I haven't had any since you got out though."

Magnolia nodded at that. She didn’t need for him to explain why. She might not truly know the feeling but she could imagine the guilt the man must have been carrying around. Knowing Dean, now, and his tendency to be hard on himself , she was surprised he didn’t buckle under the weight of it. Then again, knowing Dean she wasn’t all that surprised that he found a way forward, a way to continue his work. She could also imagine what being forgiven by her, or any of the other prisoners, would mean to him.

Sometimes he’d beg her to say it again like if he didn’t hear the words ‘I forgive you’ he wouldn’t make it through the day. She always said them. Other times he ordered her to take it back, he’d insist that what he’d done was inexcusable and unredeemable and that she had to take it back. Magnolia always answered ‘That’s not up to you.’

"Sometimes you say my name when you sleep." Dean said shamefully.

Magnolia heard the question in his words, heard that he'd been afraid for a while to ask it. "Yeah." She spoke softly.

A lot about her was soft, but she was also harder than most. It's an odd juxtaposition that reminded Dean of Sam a lot.

"In some nightmares, those that have the potential to get really very bad, you walk into my cell. You can't really do much, you can't stop it, them. But you're there and it makes it better...easier." She explained as concisely as she could.

Dean exhaled in a rush. "I thought... I always figured that I was the one..."

"You never are." She assured him, turning her head to look at him for the first time since they sat and sending him a half smile.

She returned her gaze back to the dark sky at the horizon. They sat in silence for a while until Magnolia broke it again, keeping her eyes on that one star that seemed to shine a little less brightly than the ones in the cluster it belonged to.

"It’s a little strange to me that I haven't aged. I spent more time in Hell than I did on earth and..." She let the rest of her sentence hang. She wasn't sure what it was going to be but she thought Dean knew anyway. "I went to this town’s tiny botanical garden today while you and Sam were working." She said conversationally.

"Yeah?" He prompted.

"Mhmm. I never used to like the smell of so much nature. I think I was a city person through and through."

"And now?" Dean leaned back so he’d be flat on the car. He liked listening to her talk.

"I don't know, now." She admitted and she sounded younger than her twenty six years. "I think I'm a classic vintage car kind of person, maybe." She said 'maybe' but Dean heard certainty in the way she spoke. She now sounded so much older than her twenty six years, like she had a deep understanding of herself.

"Okay. That works." He accepted easily and hoped it was a sentiment that would last for her. He really fucking hoped that it would.

He lifted a hand and touched the middle of her back with just the tips of his finger, below where her hair ended. She'd chopped it short the same day she got her anti-possession tattoo but it had been growing quickly.

She leaned back into his touch until she was both pressed into the cold metal of the car and the warm side of Dean. His arm was now tucked under her neck and wrapped around her frame, holding her close.

"Y'know, what I hadn't even noticed I'd missed?" She asked knowing that he didn't.

"What’s that?"

"Chewing." She felt his chest rumble beneath her head in a soft chuckle. “I’m serious.” She insisted smacking his torso with a hand. “After only having had blood and gags in my mouth for all that time very little feels better than biting into an apple.” She laughed lightly and softly. Always softly.

“You could have at least said cheeseburger.” He argued affronted . “Apples? Really?”

She rolled her eyes. “All about that crunch, man. What did you miss?”

“Sam.” He answered with unwavering certainty.

Magnolia rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, yeah, you two are fucking adorable, I know. I didn’t ask for Obvious for 200, Alex. What did you miss that you didn’t _think_ you would?”

“Washing my hands.” He answered without giving it much thought after chuckling at her antics. “Showering in general. Y’know they clean you up each night, put you back good as new, but you never really feel clean.”

“How can you with that stench.”

“Tell me about it. They have all this power, right? Can’t they just, I don’t know, put some heavy duty air fresheners in the halls.

Magnolia smiled into his chest at his musings. “Is it ever hard when you,” She chuckled. “Gank them.”

“How do you mean?” He looked down at her and stopped petting her hair. When had he started to?

She looked up at him to meet his gaze, resting her chin on his chest. “Knowing that they were all human before. That a deal with the devil got them trapped there, that maybe it was for a brother.”

“Like me.”

She nodded.

“No. Killing them isn’t hard.”

She nodded again before tucking her head back down to stare at that same far off star . She’d accepted his answer so easily, without an ounce of judgement.

“We’re going to stop by the orphanage tomorrow, make sure everything is okay then we’re gonna leave this town.”

“Do you two have a new case?”

“Not yet. Something always comes up though. We might... we might have to stash you somewhere.” Magnolia tensed. “Just for a little while.” He continued.

“Why?” She asked in a small voice. She hadn’t been away from the Winchesters since she’d gotten out of hell and she liked it that way. Felt safe that way.

“So you can be safe. Kevin thinks he found something in the tablets. We don’t want you mixed up in any of that. You don’t want to be mixed up in any of that.”

“I did say that, huh?”

“You did.”

“I missed being able to scratch freely too.” She said pointedly changing the subject without acquiescing . “It took a while to train myself to just scratch whenever I itch since I got out. Because I can now. I don’t have to try to trick myself into ignoring the urge.”

“I didn’t have that. I was a soul, that body I had down there wasn’t really mine, I don’t think. I don’t know how it works.” He said, his face scrunching up in confusing.

Magnolia laughed lowly.

They laid there, on the impala staring at the horizon and at the sky, for a while before either of them spoke again.

“Thank you for waking me up.”

“You got it.” Dean pressed his lips to the top of her head.

Magnolia didn’t think she could be safe anywhere else.

-

Magnolia knew it would do more harm than good but she spat in his face anyway. It was more of a light spray than anything else since her mouth had run dry far too long ago.

“Now, now, Bridget.”  Bethuel reprimanded. “That wasn’t too kind was it?”

He dug two of his finger in a wound she had in her side. He’d put it there hours ago. He pushed his fingers in deeper until he hit bone, her lowest rib to be exact, and scraped his nails along the underside of it. Magnolia whimpered.

“Don’t worry.” He assured eyes alight with playfulness. “I’m not mad. That’s the kind of attitude I’m looking for, actually.” His features darkened then. “Take the knife, Erin.”

She was chained up in her cell, like always, but the binding to one hand gave her enough slack to, if she wanted to, reach forward and take the knife he was offering her. He was holding it at the hilt, handle towards her. Taking it would mean accepting his proposal to join them, a first step towards becoming them.

The first few times a demon gave her this choice she grabbed hold of the knife, or whatever symbolic object they’d used, and stabbed them. She’d thought they were so dumb to offer her a weapon. All that did is scare the living shit out of her when they seemed completely unbothered if only annoyed. Eventually they got _very_ annoyed and she learned not to do that. They taught her not to. Instead she answered them with a steady-

“No.”

Bethuel laughed eerily and removed his fingers from inside her, wiping the blood off on her cheek and grabbing one of her elbows. “You know, every time I ask, I’m not sure what I want you to answer. On the one hand,” He tapped the handle of the knife on one of her shoulders. “I want you to break. I want to see the look you’ll have on that pretty face when you realise you’ve given in. When you learn, you’re just. Like. Me.” He smiles widely at her and taps her other shoulder with the handle. “On the other hand, once you give we won’t get to spend as much quality time with each other. I like spending time with you so much, baby.”

He pulled on her elbow in a way that strained her arm in the restraints. If he were to apply any more pressure it’d snap. Magnolia knew that wasn’t a coincidence. Bethuel was an observant demon and he liked to tailor his tortures to what his recipients disliked most. And Magnolia? She hated elbows, knees and knuckles bent in the wrong direction. The thought made her skin crawl and the sight alone made her scream more than the goddamn electro-play the demons got into a decade back.

“Take the knife, Becca.”

_My name is Magnolia._

Magnolia shut her eyes tightly and bore down, snapping her own arm in half in the demon’s hand. She shouted out in pain and repulsion but didn’t bother giving a verbal answer.

-

Magnolia gasped awake and found two pairs of concerned eyes staring at her.

“You’re okay, sweetheart, you’re fine, it was a dream. You’re okay.” Dean patted her hair down as he murmured while Sam rubbed soothing circles on her knee.

“Yeah, I am.” She agreed. “It was an okay dream.” She said surprising both brothers who shared a worried look. “I like to think, I won that one.”

Somehow, Dean understood what she meant. They were always bitter, but there were victories to be had in hell.

-

“Any special requests?” Dean asked as he handed Sam and Magnolia breakfast sandwiches from the driver’s seat of the impala. They’d wrapped up another case and needed to decide on their next destination.

“Maybe east?” Magnolia suggested.

She worked on unwrapping her meal and missed how the brothers tensed in the front seat.

“Okay.” Dean choked on the word, starting up the car.

Sam scowled and shot his brother a glare before turning in his seat to direct it at Magnolia.

“No, not okay.”

That got her attention. She looked up and raised a brow at Sam in question. “Alright.” She conceded. “West, then. Or any other direction. Whatever floats your boat, man.” She bit into her sandwich.

“Magnolia, I know we can’t make-”

“Let it go, Sammy.” Dean ordered gruffly as he drove down the road.

“Magnolia, I know we can’t make you stick around if you don’t want to,” He repeated ignoring his brother. “but we thought you liked our...arrangement. If there’s something you _don’t_ like, tell us please.”

Magnolia’s brows knitted together in confusion. She chewed faster and swallowed a little too quickly as Sam and Dean, though the latter tried very hard not to appear to be, waited for a reply.

“What are you talking about?” She finally said once the food was swallowed and traveling down her pipes in an uncomfortable lump.

“East is where you used to live.” Sam stated as an explanation, still turned in his seat.

“Sam, leave it.” Dean tried again.

Magnolia grinned. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I lived on that coast. Don’t remember much though. I’m not...” She laughed. “That’s not why I suggested we head that way. I don’t want to find my roots or whatever, not until I remember more anyway.”

It was Sam’s turn to raise a brow.

“There’s a museum a few days drive that way that I thought would be cool to check out.” She shrugged. “I gotta keep myself busy while you two are out being heroes or whatever, y’know.”

“Oh.” Sam said. “Oh.” He repeated. “Alright, then.” He nodded decisively. “Okay, so you’re good? We, _this_ , it’s good?”

“As long as you’ll have me, bud.”

Now it was Sam’s turn to grin. He turned back to face the front and chuckled contentedly, missing the sigh of relief his brother let out.

-

As long as they’ll have her turns out not to be very long at all.

The brothers were on their way back from burning a body in the cemetery. It would have been an easy salt ‘n burn, _should_ have been an easy salt ‘n burn, but Sam and Dean had made it difficult by spending most of the hunt arguing. They’d finished the job now and were driving to the motel where Magnolia was waiting, she’d texted them that she was back from the arcade, and they were still arguing.

The odd thing was that they kept switching camps. One minute Dean was saying that if they were going to start the trials to shut the gates of hell they had to keep her as far away from it as possible while Sam argued that wasn’t what Magnolia wanted. The next minute Dean was saying that she was safest with them where they could keep an eye on her and not holed up in some safe house, while Sam insisted that she wouldn’t want anything to do with anything that has to do with demons, hell, or sealing the Gates.

Sometimes throughout the day, in rare moments of wisdom, they considered asking Magnolia what she preferred. They’d shut the idea down quickly and argued some more.

On and on it went. When they spoke to the sheriff. When they examined the bodies. When they interviewed the victims’ families. When they checked the house for EMF. When they did research at the library. When they dug up a skeleton from its grave. Right to when they slammed the doors to the impala shut in perfect sync, in front of the motel.

They only stopped arguing when they opened the hotel door. Both slipped boys into strained smiles trying not to alert Magnolia to the tension between them. It was all in vain, though.

-

“I see you’re still a sick bastard.” Magnolia barked.

Bethuel slapped her with the back of his hand again, splitting her lip. “I see, you’ve still got a filthy mouth on you.”

“You’re gonna have to rip it off if you want me to stop using it.” She blustered bravely.

“You know I never liked tarnishing this beautiful face.” He crooned affectionately. “But I just might.” He threatened, giving her whiplash with how quickly he was shifting gears.

Magnolia glared back as vicious a glare as she could muster.

The demon laughed. “I missed this.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed again. “I missed us.” He trails a blunt knife up her side slowly, watches as the fabric of her t-shirt snags on it and lifts a few inches before falling back down. “We always had so much chemistry you and I.”

“Fuck. You.” She barked.

“You were so responsive, so loud for me. You reacted to my perfectly crafted tortures exquisitely. All for me.” He spoke fondly, bordering on longing.

“ _Fuck yo_ \- Ah!” She shouted when he began to twist the scalpel looking knife into her just below her sternum. The dull edge dug into her agonizingly slow and by the time it broke skin she’d prayed for a sharper knife twenty times over.

“You really hurt me, you know.” He accused darkly, all tinges of warmth gone. He was hostile now, vengeful.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?” She snarled.

“You left me!” He roared, pulled the blade out of her and stabbed her again an inch from her hip bone.

Magnolia screamed out.

“I gave you some of my best years. Spent most of my time trying to figure out what would finally break you so you could be taken off of the rack. So you could be strong and powerful like me. And what does your ungrateful bitch ass do? _Run._ From me!” His voice thundered in the room. “How long did you think that was going to last, huh?”

“You’re fucking sick!” Magnolia screeched. “You weren’t doing me any fucking favors!”

“Wasn’t I?” He shouted back, twisting the knife.

She moaned a horrendous sound of suffering.

“I asked you a question, Magnolia.” He barked pulling her hair back sharply to force her eyes to meet his.

She smirked. “That’s my name.”

“It is.” He agreed. “The flower is precious and pliant and so easy to crush. When I’d heard there was a human in _my dungeon_ that’s what I thought you’d be. But Magnolia,” He brushed the back of his hand on her cheek tenderly where a bruise was already forming with the hand that wasn’t tangled in her hair. “You were the furthest thing from easy to crush. You were quite literally unbreakable. It was a lot of fun, though, playing with your living and breathing body as opposed to just a soul. We had good times, you and me.”

“How did this happen to you? How did you become so corrupt you can’t even tell anymore, huh?” She questioned more softly than she’d intended.

“I’ve been the Grand Torturer of Hell for a while now, darling. I think we’re past wondering what happened to my humanity.”

“How pathetic. And you think you’re strong and powerful? Do you understand what the words mean?”

Bethuel exhaled through his flaring nostrils. “You’re running out of chances, Magnolia, I’d watch myself if I were you.”

“You’ve already done your worst, Bethuel. Tell me, do all the little demons snicker behind your back? Does the Big Bad Grand Torturer of Hell get bullied ‘cause he couldn’t get the live human to crack?”

“I’ll get you to crack alright.” He screamed, losing his temper, his control fraying.

He twisted the dull scalpel in her hip again making it snap in his hand. He smirked evilly and stabbed her at the waist with the half of the blade he was still holding. He left it and the one in her hip right where they were. He stepped back and watched her writhe in pain.

“I’m going to destroy you, Magnolia.” He promised. “Scream all you want, I’ve warded the room to be sound proof. Besides, you know I like it.”

Then Bethuel set out to fulfill his promise.

Magnolia prayed for a swift release. She didn’t want to go back to Hell. And she didn’t want to become like Bethuel. So she prayed that without whatever magic there was in hell that kept her alive there, she’d die before Bethuel could get what he wanted from her.

-

The boys didn’t know where to look, anymore. First they tried not to worry and called her phone. It’d be a long shot, they knew, because littering the floor were items Magnolia never went anywhere without: holy water flask, demon killing blade and a small pouch of salt. When they heard the phone ring and found it tossed on the floor, they began to worry. Sam hacked traffic cameras in the area but found nothing. Dean drove around the perimeter of the motel and found nothing. They tracked down all the abandoned warehouses in town, because it was always abandoned warehouses, but found nothing in each and every single one of them. They went back to their motel room to see if they’d missed something that could lead to her and found Castiel pressing his ear to the wall.

“Cas!” Dean exclaimed pulling Castiel into a quick hug, relieved to be getting angelic help.

The angel brushed Dean off and pressed his ear back to the wall.

“Cas?” Sam questioned.

Castiel straightened and faced the brothers. “You’re distraught.”

“We can’t find Magnolia.” Dean explained.

“So it is her.” Cas mused aloud.

“What’s her?” Dean prodded ardently.

“I heard prayers in the area. I can’t pinpoint their location, however. I believe she is in trouble.”

“Yeah, we think she was taken.” Sam filled Cas in.

“That explains the smell of sulfur.”

Dean furrowed his brows in confusion. “It doesn’t smell like sulfur.”

“My nose is far superior than yours.”

“Alright, calm down or your head might get too big for that superior nose of yours. Any clue on how we can find her?”

Castiel shook his head. “But she’s close, I can feel that.”

“Let’s drive around the block again, see if Cas can pick up on anything.” Sam suggested.

The three of them exited their motel room and headed for the impala. They passed by the check-in counter where the attendant murmured something only Cas’ superior ears picked up on. He stopped in his tracks.

“Did you just call me a whore? I assure you I do not have promiscuous tendencies and if my nature was as such it would be no concern of yours.”

The girl, and the brothers, stared back dumbfounded.

“Euhm...” The attendant stalled. “Not you, sorry. I didn’t think you’d hear that. It’s just four guys in one night, it’s impressive more than anything else really. I mean, I know girls don’t need as much of a refractory period but still. Credit where credit is due. Whore is more of a term of endearment, honest.” She rambled and then added, as though it were an explanation, “I’m a millennial.”

“It’s quite alright.” Cas forgave. “You-”

“Wait, what’d you say about four men? The girl in the same room as us saw a fourth guy?” Dean interrogated.

“Oh shit. I didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble, I figured you all were in some open relationsh-”

“Where’d they go?” Dean asked urgently stepping up to the counter. “Did you see where he took her?”

-

Magnolia figured the Winchesters had skipped town without her, except that didn’t make any sense. They wouldn’t do that. Then again just how well did she know these two brothers. No screw that, she had gotten to know them well enough to know they wouldn’t bail on her like that. That left her without an explanation as to why none of their things were in their motel room, though.

That’s where she was. In the motel room they had gotten, strung up like fairy lights. Her wrists were tied high above her head with rope, or a chain maybe, that was in turn tied to a hook in the ceiling. Bethuel must have planned ahead. Gotten here long before she’d returned from the arcade and set up shop. Maybe that’s why the boys and their things were gone. Maybe he killed them and got rid of their stuff.

No, Sam and Dean were not so easy to kill. Besides, when it did happen, because Magnolia wasn’t disillusioned enough to think that it won’t, it’ll be somewhere that isn’t a dingy two-queen-beds-and-a-cot motel room in some nameless town. Nah, it’d be somewhere epic. Maybe a ravine. Okay, maybe not a ravine.

Now that she thought of it, even her cot was gone. The weapons she kept on her, though he had disarmed and incapacitated her embarrassingly fast, were no longer strewn across the room.

“Magnolia, darling, eyes front. I don’t want you passing out because you don’t yell as pretty when you’re passed out.”

Bethuel gripped her jaw tightly to lift her hanging head. He forced her eyes to settle on his as his blunt nails dug into her cheeks, drawing blood from crescent shaped marks.

“Only a matter of time.” Magnolia mumbled sleepily. She’d lost a lot of blood, she could tell because she knew what it was like to literally be bled dry but also because when her head hung low she could see how all the blood she’d lost had stained her clothing and how it puddled at her feet. It made her sad because she really liked this sweater, the one Sam had leant her and she’d claimed as her own. “Then, you’ll be all alone again. No one’ll be as fun as me.” She slurred with half lidded eyes and half a sly smile. She’d pass out soon enough.

“Is that what you think? That you get to die? No, no, Magnolia you’re never leaving me again.”

Uncharacteristically, Bethuel picked up a sharp blade next. Magnolia shifted from one foot to another. The squish of the blood soaked carpet between her toes made bile rise to the back of her throat. The sour gagging sharpened her mind making her feel less loopy. 

When he got close enough, Bethuel cut her across a forearm, near her wrist, and then dug the knife into the slit. As more blood gushed out, he wedged the knife into the thickness of her skin splitting it into layers. He dropped the blade to the floor and shoved a finger between two sheets of flesh- yep that’s more his style. It took him a few tries to get firm grip, the area slick with that much more blood, but when he did he tugged.

Magnolia yelled out as her skin pulled and ripped from her body, revealing the red and raw layer beneath it. Bethuel let go and left the flap hanging. He’d made a strip long enough that Magnolia could feel it tickling the side of her face. She thought she was going to throw up again.

The exposed flesh screamed as air came into contact with it. If she didn’t know better Magnolia would think her arm was on fire. The pain was excruciating, it was almost too much, but then again the pain was always almost too much. The grogginess hit her full force again. It was all she could do not to sag entirely in her binding. She wanted to hold on a little longer because she wanted to let Bethuel know that he was wrong and more importantly that she was right, that he wouldn’t get to keep her. “Watch me.” She rumbled just as the door to the room was kicked down.

In came Sam and Dean Winchester and that angel friend of theirs she’d only met a few times, like some sort of three man army . They were like knights that had come to her rescue and she was sorry she ever doubted them. Though she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore so maybe a bit of doubt was warranted. She wouldn’t hold it against them if she didn’t make it though. They were going to get Bethuel, that much she knew, and she’d win, because she’d die human and he’d just die.

Small victories in Hell were always at least a little bitter. This, though, was sweetened to perfection, more so than the pie Dean had offered her, her first night out, up in Rufus’ cabin. As Magnolia passed out, the smile on her lips was also, well, sweet.

-

Dean kicked the door right off its hinges only to see Magnolia slump completely in the shackles she was in.

Turned out the demon had rented another room, which meant he was either stupid or cocky. Usually the cocky ones were dumb too so it was all more of the same.

When they entered, Cas went straight for Magnolia which allowed Dean to focus on the demon. Between Sam and him it would have been easy as pie, except Dean remembered this sick fuck. He was Alastair’s right hand man, his fucking prodigy .

This fact didn’t make things harder so much as it made Dean lose his goddamn mind. One second the black eyed freak was arrogantly challenging the brothers and the next he looked like God himself had struck fear in his soul as Dean took him down violently. The hunter didn’t even leave anything to do for Sam who just stood awkwardly by the door and watched at first before moving to help Cas get Magnolia down.

When Dean thought he’d driven his angel blade into the demon’s gut enough times he finished the job and looked over to where Magnolia was being released. The men eased her to the ground as they huddled around her. Her person was hidden by Sam and Castiel’s much larger frames.

Dean, still strangling the demon, was grinning from ear to ear, Magnolia was going to get a kick out of seeing this sicko dead. His smile faltered when he heard Castiel whisper.

“I’m sorry.” The angel said in a low tone.

Dean’s heart sank. It fucking dropped to the floor, bore down and fell to the earth’s center. This couldn’t be happening, Magnolia couldn’t not make it through this. She was too tough. She deserved better. She’d _earned_ better than this. Than dying in a motel room in a town Dean barely remembered the name of. She’d been through too much to have it end here, like this, at the hands of this sadist. Dean thought he hadn’t stabbed him enough after all. He wished he’d kept him alive, in fact. So he could make the bastard wish he was dead.

He wasn’t sure where Magnolia would stand on that. Would she be alright with him torturing if it was the likes of a demon? Would that make him a monster again? Not that he ever really stopped being one, despite Magnolia insisting that he never was. Dean couldn’t handle this, couldn’t think, but he could hear and what he heard next fished his heart out from the pits of the earth and restored it to his chest cavity.

“It’s okay.” Magnolia’s soft voice drifted to Dean’s ears. “I know you have to break it again so it can heal right. Just do it quick, the wait is usually the wors- OW! Mother fucker!”

“Magnolia.” Dean gasped the word fumbling to the huddled bodies a few feet away from him. He pushed himself between Sam and Cas and saw her. Alive, breathing.

She looked horrible. Her eyes, just a little too far apart, were tired and red-rimmed. Her body was collapsed on the floor, propped up only by Sam’s strong arms. It was like she was too drained to hold her self up on her own, despite being healed. Her lips were twisted into a small smile that looked out of place on her worn face. It didn’t waver though, it stayed firmly in place. Dean was charmed.

“Hey-o Dean-o. Got any aspirin? I don’t think the angel mojo is doing much for my headache.”

Dean grinned at her like a madman and she grinned back with a smile that didn’t belong anywhere but plastered across her face at all times.

“I will attempt to assuage your mind as I heal your leg again.” Cas offered as he touched his fingers to her temple and repaired the last of Bethuel’s damage.

Still, the pair beamed at one another.

-

“You’re really letting me drive?” Magnolia confirmed again in disbelief opening the impala’s door on the passenger side.

“Sam is passed out in the back seat and I’m bleeding out here, Magnolia.” Dean replied with an eye roll as he slumped into the seat with the girl’s help. “I think I can make an exception.”

Magnolia nodded enthusiastically with a toothy grin and moved back to close the door.

Dean stops her with a hand on her forearm. “Don’t crash her.” He warned.

Magnolia’s laugh was cut off when she finally shut the door leaving Dean in the silence of the car. The only sounds were Sam’s reassuring breaths and the muted footfalls of the girl rounding the front of Baby. It was too dark to see but he’d heard her when she finally stopped in front of the driver’s side.

Magnolia slipped onto the seat making the bench shift and Dean wince. He’d been in better shape. He had a gash on his side deep enough to bleed out dangerously but not deep enough to have hit any organs. Nothing some stitches couldn’t fix. All in all, he’d been in worse shape.

“Keys.” Magnolia stuck out her hand to him like a grubby ten year old.

Dean grumbled as he attempted to dig them out of his pocket. With a grunt he waved a hand over his general pocket-crotch area in a ‘have at it’ sort of way. Magnolia laughed again, an easy and bubbly one. It clashed with the time of night and their current post-hunt state reserved for wound licking. Reserved for anything other than the playful and suggestive way Magnolia wiggled her brows at Dean.

“Magnolia.” Dean complained.

“Alright alright.” She laughed some more while sliding her hand into his pocket. She winked deliberately before finally fishing the keys out.

Magnolia looked way too pleased with herself as she gave them a giggle. Dean grumbled some more as he busied himself with keeping pressure on his open wound. He heard her fumble as she slid the key into the ignition. Then, instead of the purring he was used to hearing from Baby an upsetting whir is what he got.

Magnolia let out a nervous chuckle.

The car jolted forward with a start then halted abruptly, alarming Dean.

He swiveled, cringed in pain, and stared Magnolia down. “You do know how to drive, right?”

“Probably.” Is all she offered as she got the car moving again.

“Probably?” Dean _squealed._

“I mean, yeah. I was an adult, I must have learned to drive. I figure it’s like riding a bicycle.” She drove off of the lot they were in and onto the road heading in the direction they had come from earlier and away from the abandoned factory.

“No, no it’s not like riding a bike. Bike’s don’t have motors and bikes don’t weigh over a ton.” Dean fired back patting the dashboard with the hand that wasn’t on his most prominent injury as though he were reassuring Baby.

Magnolia laughed. “We’re fine.” She assured. “Isn’t that true, Baby?” She caressed the car.

“Don’t talk to her!” Dean snapped in comical jealousy. “And keep both hands on the wheel.” He continued.

Magnolia turned out to be right, they were fine. The ride back to the motel was bumpy and jarring but they made it in one piece. By the time they arrived, Sam had woken up complaining about a headache and bitching about vampires.

That’s what they had been hunting. Vampires. Magnolia could barely grasp what her life had become, she could barely grasp that she had a life at all, mind you. When she first started riding with the Winchesters she didn’t want to be involved in hunting since she’d been through hell and back, already. However, once hell came for her again, when Bethuel found her and got to her so easily, her attitude changed. She hated that she’d been so vulnerable, had barely been able to defend herself, despite the training she’d been doing, despite being armed at all times. Though that night had turned out to be a victory she also hated that she’d been so willing to die. She’d only just gotten her life back, she didn’t want to let go of it anytime soon.

She told the brothers all of this and they agreed to train her more deliberately, which led to taking her out on the field for some practice, which led to her lending a hand with cases where they needed it. She didn’t necessarily want to be a hunter but she didn’t mind the thought so much anymore. She was still mostly part time, still learning, but unlike before she wasn’t only armed now, she was dangerous. Magnolia couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something for her to do with all that danger brewing inside of her.

Sam was passed out again, only this time from exhaustion, on one of the beds while she and Dean sat on the other.

“You did really good, tonight.” Dean complimented. “But you’re a shit sewer.”

Magnolia snickered as she continued her clumsy suturing. “I did fucking great.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Your response time has gotten faster, but you need to follow through more with your blows.”

“Yeah, how that vampire continued to move after I had most of his head chopped off, I will never know.”

“Gotta sever it off, completely.”

“Well, I know _that._ You know, if you weren’t so busy evaluating me,” She nudged his shoulder with her own playfully, without dropping her instruments. “Then maybe you wouldn’t have to put up with my shoddy needle work. Perhaps, you should be learning some fighting tricks from me, instead of the other way around. I barely got a scratch.”

“Ha! Fat chance.” Dean exclaimed then quieted down so as not to wake Sam. Though, a hurricane probably couldn’t wake Sam at this point. “There’s more of a chance of us getting struck by lightning twice, right here right now, than of you winning a fight against me.”

“Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.” She informed him.

“My point exactly.”

She chuckled at that, tying off the thread she’d been working with and snipping the excess. “Pretty.” She remarked at her own work.

“You’re slowly transforming me into Frankenstein.” Dean disagreed looking down at her not-so-handy work before pulling on his fresh shirt the rest of the way.

“I’d be Frankenstein in that poor and unimaginative analogy. He’s the scientist, the monster never gets a name. Thank you for letting me practice on you.” She corrected him with a shit eating grin and then smiled sincerely.

“Fuck you for insulting my intelligence, nerd, and you’re welcome.” He glared holding her gaze.

“I would never.” She assured dramatically keeping her tone low. She found her skin heating up all over as Dean kept his gaze leveled on her.

“Mhmm, color me convinced.”

“Color me convinced? If I’m a nerd that makes you King of the Lame.”

“You’re not very good at come backs, y’know? Even earlier, I swear some of the vamps weren’t sure if you were serious or not.”

“Fuck off, my trash talk was fangtastic.”

“You didn’t just...”

“I did, and you liked it.”

Dean laughed lowly and the sound surrounded Magnolia entirely, encompassed her and pulled her down further in this rabbit hole she’d dug for herself in her mind. She wasn’t sure when it happened but somewhere along the way Dean stopped being just an anchor for her. He didn’t stop being someone who drew her out of her nightmares and out of those dark head-spaces with disconcerting ease. He didn’t stop being someone with whom she felt she shared a kinship with for surviving the same things she did. He didn’t stop being easy and fun to talk to, but he became _more._ She was seeking him out for more than just comfort now. She thought of him as more than some sort of companion.

At first she thought maybe she was misinterpreting her feelings of gratitude. Thought maybe she’d spent so much time in the pit far from humanity she was latching onto the first kind hand offered to her. That she was just grateful towards Dean for keeping her safe and for looking after her. Not just for putting up with her on the road with them, feeding her, clothing her, putting motel roof after motel roof over her head, but for taking care of her emotionally too. For waking up with her and staying up with her when she needed. For sharing about hell not because he felt like it, not because he’d wanted to, but because he sensed that she had needed it. And she had. It made her feel connected to something, to him.

Nevertheless, her people skills were rusty so it took her a while to confirm that what she was feeling for Dean was more than platonic. The realisation came to her when she noticed how distinctly different she felt about Sam. Sam had technically been the one to save her from that basement the Gates of Hell had spat her into. So why weren’t her emotions flaring up for him? Why didn’t she blush when he teased her about this thing or that? Why didn’t she hold her breath when she thought he was going to touch her? Why didn’t she purposefully avoid looking at him when he stepped out of the shower?

No, if Sam was the baseline for friendship, Dean had become _more._ When she finally accepted that it made a lot of sense to her. Dean was the person she knew best on earth. That might be a sad thought, but it wasn’t untrue. She’d forgotten most of her past life. Flashes of memories still came but not enough to rival the past year she’d spent with the Winchesters. He’d slowly become the centerfold to her life. A reference point for everything and everyone else. She and Dean had talked so freely, usually late into the night right outside their motel, that she was sure he knew her best too.

She knew it wasn’t the same for him, though. She understood that he knew others better than he knew her and other knew him better than she did him. But still. _Still._ To her he wasn’t just more, he was _the most_. It wasn’t equivalent but there was something there for him too. Magnolia could sense it in the way she’d catch him looking at her while they did research. In the way he liked to put a hand on her more often than it was strictly necessary. Maybe it was protectiveness but that’s not how it was from the get go, it was something he’d started doing with time. Sometimes Dean would wake her to go outside and talk just for the sake of it, without anyone being in some kind of emotional distress and Magnolia thought that meant something.

So sitting on this motel bed, by the dim light of a lamp, with his brother snoring softly a few feet away, Magnolia swept to the side the medical kit between them and shamelessly pressed herself close to Dean.

“You like my bad puns and I think you like me.” She stated before placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder closest to her and cupping his jaw with the other.

She smiled at him briefly, reassuringly and fondly and with want, and let her eyes flutter shut as she slotted her mouth against his.

That’s all they did at first. They just held their lips to each other’s almost like they were holding hands. But it was _more_ than that. Everything was always more with Dean. Magnolia could feel an invisible tension cumulate around them and between them as the moment went on. His lips felt heavenly, soft and somehow braced for her, like they’d been made and trained to meet hers.

Then Dean gripped her waist with one hand while the other tangled with her hair at the back of her head. His actions were the catalyst that set them off. It made whatever force that was straining around them break along side all of their restraint.

All that had been building over the course of the last year came crashing through them. Their lips pressed into each other heatedly but not void of all softness. Dean cradled her head affectionately while he moved his other hand south and clasped her hip in a way that would bruise.

Magnolia felt hazy and disoriented and _good._ She felt so good in Dean’s arms as he gave just as much as he took. She pressed herself closer eliciting a tiny growl like moan from him. That sound _did things to her._

Dean pulled away gasping for breath and Magnolia moved her lips to the underside of his jaw. Dean’s hands let go of her making her feel adrift for one terrifying second before they settled on her shoulders. Then, they were holding her back and he was pulling away. _That’s not how this was supposed to go._

“Stop, stop! Magnolia quit it.”

Magnolia opened her eyes and looked at a wrecked Dean. She had no doubt she matched his appearance but where she felt dazed and still quite unfocused, Dean’s eyes were sharp and full of regret.

He let go of her again and stood. This time the feeling of drifting was much more consuming since her hands weren’t on him either. She was afloat and all she wanted was to be tethered to this man again. Maybe for a long time.

Dean turned without another word and stalked out of the room.

Magnolia took a solid minute to collect her bearings and prepare herself for what was to come then followed him outside quietly.

She maybe should have considered that he might have driven off somewhere to put some space between them but she didn’t which worked out because he hadn’t. She saw him leaning against one of the vending machines near the shack that served as a front desk. She made her way over and stood in front of him for a while before either of them spoke.

“I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve you.” Dean admitted with chagrin.

“I’m not something you have to earn Dean. I’m something you get to have, I’m offering.” She explained then thought maybe it was an offer he didn’t want. “Unless you aren’t interested?” Magnolia couldn’t have been distorting all the signs she’d been getting from him, she couldn’t have misread that kiss.

“I... It’s not right. You with someone like me, it’s not right.”

“Someone like you?”

“Dammit Magnolia, yes.” He shouted, quieted himself, but continued to speak intensely just this side of feral. “Someone like me. How... How can you want anything to do with me? You know what I’ve done, the kind of man I am.”

“Yeah I do know. You do good. You’re a her-”

“Don’t. Stop calling me that. You’re not right in the head Magnolia if a hero is what you think I am. The things I did down there, I’m a monster.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what you did, Dean. I was there, remember? For some of it at least. I didn’t fucking forget and I never will. I remember how you used to stab me. Just simple straight forward stabbing. Like you couldn’t muster up enough will to be more creative. You couldn’t keep your eyes open at first, like you couldn’t bear to watch. I know you tried to avoid the most painful spots, major organs. Back then I thought you kept your eyes closed to make it more interesting for you. Like you could surprise yourself with the outcome. I thought you tried to make it less painful to lull me into a false sense of security. I know better now.

“I also remember, when you got more violent. More deliberate. When your goal was to hurt me. Really hurt me. I thought you wanted to make me scream and you did want that but it’s not because the sound pleased you like it did them. It’s because you weren’t allowed to stop until I did. It’s because you wanted it to end. To finish. I also remember when it got easier for you. When it wasn’t as hard anymore for you to watch. Somehow the activity got caught between horrifying and mundane. I get that you had to shut down a bit to get through it.

“I remember how after maybe a hundred visits you started each session by pushing your thumbs into my eye sockets. I know why too. Because I unnerved you. The way I observed you. I was learning your face. It’s how I passed the time. I remember-”

“Stop! Stop, I’m going to be sick.” Dean plead leaning more fully on the machine behind him for support.

“I thought this is what you wanted? Don’t you want me to punish you? Isn’t that what you think you deserve?”

“Magnolia, please.” He whimpered.

“No. You’re spending your life trying to make up for something you won’t forgive yourself for but you have nothing to forgive yourself for Dean. All you did was try to survive. All you’re guilty of is doing your goddamn best. And your best is so good, Dean. You save lives, you’ve saved the world. What more can you ask of yourself?” Magnolia wanted to move closer to him, touch him and ground him, but she thought better of it.

“What I _did-_ ”

“Jesus _Christ_ enough! You’re letting them win if you let yourself be tormented by this. You _can’t_ let them win. I won’t let you! You do realise that you’re not the first man they managed to break, right? It’s literally their job to do that to people. Not only that but the one who did it to you was the resident expert.”

“You managed to hold out ten times as long as me.” He countered shamefully.

“Because I was stubborn as fuck and hateful. I was so full of hate I could feel myself choking on it sometimes, Dean. But unlike you I knew, still know, who to direct it at and it’s not myself. It’s not at you. It’s at _them_.”

“I was _becoming_ them.” He roared taking a menacing step forward but Magnolia held her ground. If he thought he could scare her to prove a point he was wrong. He stared her down and her fiercely loving stare back broke him in a way Alastair never could. Softly, he continued. “If Castiel hadn’t come for me... It was only a matter of time.”

“Castiel did come for you.” Magnolia said matter-of-factly, like that’s all that really mattered. “Look at all the good you’ve done since, Dean. The souls down there, they were going to go through hell in any case. You want to blame yourself, you want to regret, fine. If you won’t believe you were just as much a victim as the rest of us were, that’s okay. But you’ve repented enough. Dean, you’ve more than made up for it.”

“You’re too good for this world, Magnolia.” Dean said with a sigh leaning back against the vending machine and pulling her with him tucking her into his side.

She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Probably, but the only reason I’m still in it is because there are heroes like you and your brother out there. That’s what you are, please stop arguing with me. Please just believe it. Please Dean.”

“I don’t know that I can do that.”

“Okay, but I won’t stop trying to convince you.”

“Sometimes you do. Sometimes, a few minutes at a time, sometimes for a few days I don’t feel so responsible. But then I remember that I am.”

“Okay.” She nodded understanding that she wasn’t going to get through to him more that night. “I think maybe you were right about one thing, though. You and me, it’s not right. At least not right now.”

“Okay.” Dean accepted. He was amazed at how she could hold out so much hope not only for him but for them. For this thing he had felt growing between them two until it had become palpable. He wasn’t sure how or why she was willing to tarnish herself by letting him in. How she wasn’t afraid he’d infect her with his own special brand of rot, but he loved that she wasn’t. It helped him hold out hope for the right time for them as well. Maybe it helped him hold out hope for himself a little too.

-

A week after that kiss, the Winchesters found out that they’re legacies to the Men of Letters and discovered the bunker. Magnolia teased them a lot about being royalty and curtseyed an annoying amount.

A week after that she met Kevin for the first time. She’d spoken to him countless times on the phone in the past year but when he was brought to the bunker they finally got to see each other face to face. He’d commented on how with a name like Magnolia he’d thought she’d look more like a southern bell and she said that being a prophet and all she’d thought his beard would be longer. They got along.

The week after that was uneventful. Magnolia found it hard to sleep in a room without both Sam and Dean but she adjusted. Adapted even though she hated having to. She trained some more with the facilities the bunker had to offer. Since the brothers were waiting on Kevin to find something in the demon tablet and had decided to hang back at the bunker for a bit, they had more time to help her sharpen her skills.

That’s how the next two weeks went. Then Kevin was able to decipher something in the tablet. As he explained to the boys that the way to seal the Gate of Hell was through a series of trials and spells he inadvertently let slip to Magnolia that there was in fact a way way to shut the Gates of Hell once and for all. Magnolia had learned since her escape that there was more than one door to hell but this was _The_ Gates of Hell, as in they could seal it off completely. It was something the brothers had been keeping from her simply because they hadn’t figured out how to proceed with her yet.

Kevin told them what the first two trials were but that the third one was on the second half of the tablet.

Then Magnolia said something that scared Dean down to his core. She said that she wanted to do it.

The next week Magnolia and Dean argued. Constantly, ‘round the clock. They shouted and yelled, cried and pleaded. Sam and Kevin stayed out of it, mostly. It wasn’t until Cas stopped by and pointed something out that the bunker had a moment of calm and reprieve. Cas explained that Magnolia had technically already done the second trial and as long as she read the Enochian spell twice after the first trial, all should go according to plan. That made so much sense that it made Dean more afraid, which made him argue even harder.

So the next week they argued some more. Magnolia wanted to this so much. As soon as she’d heard Kevin explain what he’d read on the tablet, she felt it in her bones that this was for her to do. It was the ultimate fuck you to hell but it was more than that. Something inside of her, in her bones, ached to complete these tasks. To contribute to the world. She’d felt the need for a while and here it was, her opportunity.

Despite this she almost caved. Almost agreed to let Dean do it. Almost let him convince her to step down. But then they got the second half of the angel tablet and Kevin said the third and final trial was to cure a demon and there was no way in heaven _or_ hell _or any goddamn place in between_ that she was going to let anyone do this but her.

Eventually Sam, Kevin and Castiel started backing her arguments. Having one trial down cut the process by a third and suddenly Dean found himself going up against a hunter, a prophet, an angel and the force of nature he called Magnolia. So he gave in.

They tracked down a family who cut a deal ten years ago and Magnolia did the first trial. She killed and rolled around in the blood of a hellhound. Then she got right back up and grinned triumphantly at the brothers. For a minute Dean thought that it’d all be alright. Until she read the spell and he had to watch the toll it took on her body, on her entire person. He tried to persuade the others to change their minds. They could find another hellhound for him to kill but no one budged despite their own worries about Magnolia’s well being.

They made her wait a few days before reading the spell again and she didn’t fight them on it.

A few days after that they caught Crowley, the demon who had put her on the rack in the first place. The irony did not escape Magnolia and she was more than pleased with how things had come full circle. It made her endeavor to seal the Gates feel even more right, despite the agony she’d been in since it had begun. It was a strange thing because she knew pain well, had gotten intimately acquainted during her residency in hell. Yet, this was different, the suffering ran deeper but more as an undercurrent that flared up as opposed to external forces breaking down her body.

Before moving forward she had to confess her sins. Magnolia’s were mostly trivial, she didn’t remember enough from her life before Hell and hadn’t exactly been up to no good since her escape. Still, she admitted to hustling in bars, to enjoying it, along with a string of other inconsequential misdemeanors. She found herself confessing that she’d failed Dean Winchester so far, in helping him reach redemption. She found herself promising that she’d get it right eventually.

When Magnolia finished, she and Dean waved Sam and Castiel off as they went to seal the gates of heaven. Sam said something about how this would be a good day.

Finally, in an old church,  the time for the third trial came but the right time for Magnolia and Dean never did.

Around the sixth hour, Crowley was a blubbering mess. Amongst other things, he apologized to what he’d done to Magnolia, about what he’d allowed to let happen to all those souls. To Dean. Magnolia spoke words that surprised both the recovering demon and the plaid clad hunter. She said that there was enough forgiveness in the world to go around. Enough for the King of hell to get his share.

Dean knew Magnolia more than just pretty well. At times, he felt like he knew her best. Which is why he was sure that she meant what she said. That changed things for him, because if Magnolia believed Crowley’s soul could be saved it meant she believed in his own redemption much more than he thought she did. _That meant things to him._

A while later, as she was about to administer the last injection to Crowley, who was now more than willing to receive it, Dean got a call from Sam.

“Magnolia wait.” Dean interrupted in distress.

Magnolia was so tired, she just wanted to finish this and get some sleep. Still, she dragged with laborious effort her eyes up from Crowley’s neck, where she had the syringe poised, to meet Dean’s green ones.

“Magnolia, Sam just found out the trials kill the person who does them.” He rushed through the words and rushed forward to... what? Take her in his arms? Shelter her from this?

Magnolia raised a palm to stop him mid-step. She thought she’d fall apart with the force of his body colliding with hers. She was so tired. So weak. But not too weak to finish this. “So?” She answered with a frail voice.

“So?” Dean demanded bewildered. “You’ll die.”

Magnolia sighed deeply, like she was stuck explaining something infuriatingly simple to a child, like this conversation was taking too much out of her. “Dean,” She spoke softly. “I’m sealing the Gates of Hell. We should have known there’d be a price.”

“Not _this._ Not your life!” He snapped angrily.

“Demons won’t be able to roam free on earth ever again, Dean. That’s worth more than my life.”

“You’re not serious. Magnolia, we’ll find another way, we’ll-”

“Stop.” She raised her hand again. “This, it’s a win Dean. The biggest win. Don’t fight it, don’t be angry, jesus christ don’t blame yourself for it okay?” She moved closer to him, pressed herself to his chest, her cheek against his sternum. It wasn’t a hug as her arms hung limply at her side. She was too exhausted for more. “I want this. I want this so much. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more.” She looked up at him and her eyes bore into his. “I used to think that of us. Now, I want this more than I want you.” She admitted honestly.

She moved to walk away but Dean stopped her with hand on her arm. “What about what I want?”

“Tonight, we’re heroes, we don’t get to be selfish. Tomorrow, you can take a day off.” She smiled and went back to Crowley.

“Magnolia, please.” Dean begged as tears started to prickle. He already knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop her. He could see her firm determination plain as day.

“Did I ever tell you how much I hate it?” She drew his attention back to the moment, back to her. “My name, I mean. Don’t forget it, though, okay? Don’t remember me by anything else.”

Magnolia lifted the syringe back to Crowley’s neck.

“Hey, make this even more worthwhile for me, yeah? When I seal the gates, leave your guilt on the other side. There’s salvation to be had, Dean. For Crowley it begins here. You’ve been on your journey much longer though, have it end with this. With me.”

Magnolia smiled softly at a teary eyed Crowley and pushed the needle into his skin and pushed the plunger down. She muttered the words she now knew by heart and fell back into Dean’s arms, then rose out of them and upwards towards heaven. She left behind Dean Winchester, a broken man, but perhaps a little less broken than how she had found him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)  
> I'd, of course, appreciate feedback.


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